


It's a Nice, Balmy Day in Hell

by ThisDominionIsMine



Series: The Here and Now [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ice Cream, Road Trips, Sexual Tension, finger lickin' good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2018-01-08 00:45:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1126371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisDominionIsMine/pseuds/ThisDominionIsMine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That’s what you get for waiting,” she says while he stands there looking miffed by the betrayal of this petty construction of sugar and carbohydrates.<br/>Hook raises one finger. “Not always. But this time…” He studies the remainder of the cone, which is narrowly missing dribbling vanilla all over his boots, then shrugs. “I concede.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's a Nice, Balmy Day in Hell

**Author's Note:**

> I may have marathoned fifty-five episodes of OuaT in eight days. Oops?

The Dairy Queen is across a four-lane strip of highway from a bowling alley, a pizza place, and a gas station. Behind it is the Iowa River – one of the most polluted rivers in the world, as Henry is happy to tell her. (With the book of fairytales long gone, Wikipedia and Google are his new favorite entertainment centers.) “I still want ice cream though,” he says, so she pulls the Bug into a space in the half-empty parking lot and kills the engine.

Henry’s out of the backseat in a flash, but Emma takes a little more time, relishing the stretch in her muscles after a morning and afternoon squeezed in behind the wheel. When she looks over, Hook’s already out and upright, four-century-old muscles be damned, watching Henry go with his eyes but staring at something else, that distant, stubborn look he always gets when he has to deal with something modern taking over his face.

“You can ask what it is,” she reminds him.

He shifts his weight from foot to foot and fusses at his hook. “Iced cream?”

“It’s cold; it’s sweet; it comes in a load of flavors.” She pauses in shrugging off her jacket. “Vanilla or chocolate?”

Hook’s expression is edging towards constipation. “Rum?”

“Nice try.” Emma tosses her jacket into the car and shuts the door. “You can leave that behind, you know,” she adds, nodding at his coat. “It’s not going to get any cooler.”

He smiles. “I think I’ll hang onto it, love.”

The hook, at least, gets left in the car.

The Dairy Queen’s essentially open-air, with the vendors and ice cream enclosed in the precious chill while the customers get to swelter outside, and a pack of college students have commandeered the few picnic tables that are shaded by trees growing along the river. Henry skirts around them to the walking trail that runs beside the river as soon as he has his Blizzard and perches on the fence to peer at the rail bridge a few hundred yards away as a freight train rolls across it. Emma keeps one eye on him while she collects her cone (mint chip) and hands Hook his (vanilla for simplicity’s sake, because he keeps looking like everything’s going to bite him).

“You lick it,” she informs him.

He raises one eyebrow. “How dignified.”

“More dignified than getting wasted and picking a fight.” She starts back towards the car and Hook follows with a creak of leather and thud of bootheels.

They lean against the hood of the Bug together, watching Henry poke around the riverbank, shadows thrown long by the low angle of the sun as nightfall creeps closer. Emma makes the mistake of glancing at Hook after he tries his first tentative lick off a melting cone. He meets her gaze immediately, all bowed head and raised eyebrows, and she says “Look, you’re not dead” without air in her lungs.

He huffs, and holds her eyes for his next lick, stupid coat collar high around his neck, heedless of the sheen of sweat forming there in the heat – the car thermometer said ninety-four when they parked – and his hair’s getting on the longer side, enough to get a proper fistful of, oh god, Captain Hook is going to have to get a haircut, there is no god, she still thinks of yanking his head back to put a knife to his throat at their first meeting-

“Problem, love?”

Emma bites the inside of her cheek. “Just eat your ice cream.”

Hook chortles to himself.

She’s lost, at that point, because he dives in with abandon, and after four hundred years it can be presumed that a man figures out how to use his tongue in certain situations, especially with an audience, and every time he slides another glance at her she has to look away. So eventually she’s reduced to keeping one eye on Henry and one on the crows’ feet that have re-lined themselves deeper with each passing day to frame Hook’s gaze, she’s not looking at his mouth, she’s not – she’s  _not_ , it’s all his stupid gigantic coat’s fault – it’s just ice cream, her own cone practically soup in her hands before she remembers it.

She could practically drink it, so she does, just to make a point, crunching on the chocolate bits, and she pretends not to watch Hook pretend not to watch her, because she may be a bad actor but he’s worse, so much worse, he’s barely even trying. It’s the worst sort of comedy, and when the bottom drops out of his cone he _deserves_ it.

“That’s what you get for waiting,” she says while he stands there looking miffed by the betrayal of this petty construction of sugar and carbohydrates.

Hook raises one finger. “Not always. But this time…” He studies the remainder of the cone, which is narrowly missing dribbling vanilla all over his boots, then shrugs. “I concede.”

She smiles. “The cone’s still edible.” She wolfs down her own to demonstrate, then looks around for Henry. He’s pacing back and forth along the fence, but trots over when he sees her looking. “Hey, kid.”

“Hey.” He looks them both up and down. “How much further are we going tonight?”

“Only an hour or two. Sun’ll be setting soon.” Emma starts wiping her hands on her napkin. “You ready to go?”

“Yep.” He grins and scoots around them to the backseat.

Emma looks up at Hook. “How about-” She stops. “You’re kidding me.”

Hook raises his eyebrows as he licks another long stripe up his ring finger. “You never mentioned how sticky the stuff was.”

“You are actually not real.”

“Oh I’m very real, love.” He gestures down at his jacket, the stump of his hand. “Very, very real.”

She almost grabs the hair. She almost does it. She could have him on his knees in a second, and that is  _so_  tempting. “You’re insufferable.”

“But you suffer me anyways.” He actually has the audacity to slide two fingers into his mouth and look her in the eye while he pulls them out and wipes them on his napkin. “I’ll be in the car, if you need a moment.” He steps around her, coat fluttering out to brush her thigh, the edge of her knee, and he grins at her across the hood while she watches him pull the door open and fold himself inside.

Sweat is gluing her tank top to her back, and her bra straps are chafing at her shoulders, but she does stay out for a moment, hands splayed wide for purchase on the yellow-painted metal, because the thick, muggy river air is easier to breathe than what’s waiting for her in the car; she’s sure of it.


End file.
